It is currently owned by Donjon Recycling, according to WNYC.
The graveyard was founded by John Witte and was originally named the Witte Scrapyard. They also interviewed the former owners of the rotting crafts, nearby residents and others familiar with the graveyard to track the history of the site. Together, the pair set out in a row boat to film the ships. Van Dorp, who lives in Kew Gardens, Queens, publishes the blog Tugster, which is dedicated to New York's waterways - an area he's dubbed the city's "sixth boro." Kane, a former Associated Press editor, tracked down the man behind the images: Will Van Dorp, a creative writing professor in New Jersey with a passion for maritime history that led him to photograph the boats in 2010. I thought this could translate into really compelling footage for a documentary." "What caught my eye was the way they look, I thought it's just fascinating how they look like ghost ships or crumbling wrecks. "I spotted some images on the Internet of these rotting, rusting ships," said Gary Kane, the documentary's director. Crown Heights, Prospect Heights & Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.
Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens & Red Hook.The boats evoke the past in their iconic silhouettes make us wonder how hulks of steel became so disposable and inspire us to continue to transform a landfill into a park. Another graveyard boat, the USS PC-1264, was discovered by Kane to be the first World War II submarine chaser with a predominately African American crew.Īs the pictures show, Freshkills Park adventurers have also visited the graveyard on boat tours offered by Classic Harbor Lines. Over 1,000 people were killed when the General Slocum passenger ferry sunk in the East River in 1904. Hewitt that assisted in the rescue of survivors from the General Slocum. These include the NYC Fire Department coal-burning fireboat, the Abram S. According to Kane and Van Dorp, a number of noteworthy vessels remain in the muck of the graveyard. A documentary has also been made about the boat yard, the Graves of Arthur Kill, was produced by Gary Kane and shot and researched by Gary Kane and Will Van Dorp. The boat graveyard has inspired many an intrepid city dweller to venture to Rossville to view and photograph the boats. Interestingly, they note the graveyard as one of the hallmarks of their Staten Island location. The former Witte Marine salvage operation has been taken over by Donjon Marine who offers ship breaking and marine recycling operations at the site. Now, the defunct and rotting steam tugs, ferries, and car floats are no longer worth the effort to salvage. But as time went on, the salvage operations were overwhelmed by the number of boats entering the scrap yard and the sheer quantity of boats in the waterway in turn led to illegal boat dumping. After World War II, Witte Marine, a Staten Island scrap yard located on Arthur Kill Road in Rossville, began purchasing obsolete boats in order to salvage usable parts. How did the boat graveyard in the Arthur Kill come to pass? The graveyard was once the location of one of the largest marine scrap yards on the East Coast. No matter the location, these boat graveyards share a visual language of mysterious abandonment- eerie rusted shapes floating on the sea floor, jutting above the water line or stranded on watery sandscapes. And possibly the largest ghost fleet of all was created when Allied bombers sunk part of Japan’s imperial fleet during WWII. Closely related but not necessarily the work of individual boat owners, is the conscious disposal of obsolete vessels, such as ill-fated early submarine models off the coast of England or wooden steamships in the Potomac River. Others, such as the Mauritania Bay boat graveyard in Nouadhibou are a function of illegal abandonment. Blinding fog in San Francisco Bay and submerged reefs in the Red Sea have created their own local graveyards. Some natural, but more often manmade activities are the forces behind boat graveyards. Others, with perhaps a more pragmatic view, see the graveyard as a place with dangerous and unsafe hunks of metal filled with toxic substances that should be removed from the waterway. According to some, the Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard is an historical and haunted maritime marvel, ranking among the top ten of boat graveyards and separately, of out-of-the-way NYC curiosities. From Behind the Mounds: Abandoned Ship Graveyard in Our Backyardĭistant cousins of the Titanic are lying offshore just south of Freshkills Park’s West Mound.
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